Veere Di Wedding actor Shikha Talsania: Thankfully, I wasn’t asked to play the fat friend this time

Actor Shikha Talsania says that over the years, she’s been getting calls for performance-oriented roles.

Actor Shikha Talsania is basking in the success of Veere Di Wedding, which continues to have a strong run at the box office. Not only has this film given her that one mainstream, headline-making role that eluded her for years, but it has also helped Shikha break the ‘fat friend’ mould.

Actor Shikha Talsania played one of the four lead women in Veere Di Wedding.

While the success of this film means a marked difference to her career, Shikha feels that the industry has been changing for a while now. “Everyone is evolved now — scriptwriters, directors, producers, casting guys. Stories are getting way more etched out and we’re not making anything in a typical formula sort of way,” says Shikha, adding that the kind of roles coming to her have also been changing.

“Over the years, I’ve been getting calls for performance-oriented roles and not just dimensional roles. Even for Veere Di Wedding, I wasn’t asked to play the fat girl or fat friend, which used to happen back then,” adds the 32-year-old actor, who’s the daughter of the renowned comedian Tiku Talsania, and made her debut in Wake Up Sid (2009) as a college student.

In Veere Di Wedding, her character is a strong-willed woman, who marries a white man against her family’s wishes and is mother to a two-year-old — it’s a role that gave her much room to act, and Shikha feels happy. More than the mainstream recognition that has come with it, the film’s “real women” appealed to her.

The actor says, “For me, it was the story of the friendship of four women and it was the relatability factor, the reality and real women of today that formed the essence of the film. The fact that it fell into the category of a commercial film was an add-on.”

She may have shaken off the label of ‘fat, pretty, and funny’ — she earlier said that she was fed up of hearing this — but Shikha admits that “wit is in my blood”, because “my dad has a delicious comic timing”.

She’s proud of her lineage, but as a performer, Shikha is an original. “I feel,” she says, “when it comes to acting, it’s just you. So, you can say I’m a bit of me and a bit of my dad.”

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